SAPPHIRE
The dark angel’smidnight eyes glint with defiance as she gives up trying to free herself from the prison of ice.
“Go ahead,” she says, weak but taunting. “Do your worst.”
Riven draws his sword and lets the tip hover near her throat. “Is that a challenge?” he asks, calm and calculating.
Too calm. Too calculating.
I grip my dagger, my fingers trembling, a breeze brushing across my skin.
How far is Riven going to go? How far is hecapableof going? After all, he designed those three trials for me and Zoey—trials designed to break our bodies and minds.
Now, there’s something in the quiet precision of his movements that terrifies me.
“One of your kind took our human companion,” Riven says to the dark angel. “Zoey. Where is she?”
She tilts her head back, laughing softly. “Why waste your time on a human?” she asks. “She’s nothing. Less than nothing.”
“She’s not nothing,” I say, but the dark angel shakes her head and smiles, as if I’m a child talking back to my parent.
Anger rushes through me, and I pull water from the air, splashing it on her face.
Surprise flashes in her midnight eyes, and she laughs again, although she doesn’t use her magic to dry herself off. Which means she’s still weak, from both the blood loss and the relaxation potion.
Riven glances over at me, cool and detached. “Use your air magic,” he says. “Make it hard for her to breathe.”
“I don’t know how—” I start, but he cuts me off.
“Do it,” he presses. “Or do you not care about getting answers?”
The memory of Zoey being flown away by that dark angel plays through my mind—the terror in her eyes, and the pain that’s been eating at me about how she could be dead right now.
If she’s dead, it would be my fault.
Which means I have to step up. I have to do everything I can to find her, even if that means embracing the monster lingering under the surface.
“I do care,” I tell him, determination rushing through me as I focus on the dark angel’s throat, constricting the air around it just enough to make it difficult—but not impossible—for her to breathe.
Ghost prowls closer to me as I do, pressing against my leg in an offer of support.
Riven might hate me, but at least Ghost still cares.
“We’re not here for games,” Riven says as the dark angel gasps for air. “We’re here for answers. And if you don’t start giving them, I’ll make you wish you had.”
I increase the pressure, and she gasps again, sharper this time.
I hate this. I hatemyselffor being capable of doing it.
But it’s what I have to do. For Zoey.
“Release your hold,” Riven commands me. “Let her speak.”
I do, and the dark angel narrows her eyes at me, as if she’s challenging me.
“Your friend could be anywhere,” she says, and I tighten my grip around the hilt of my dagger at her obvious non-answer.
Riven responds by sending ice crystals crawling up her neck, stopping just short of breaking skin. “Answer the question,” he demands.
